This is what he was about to do with it. In August 1914 the British Expeditionary Force retreated two hundred miles from Mons in ten days, through one of the hottest summers of the century, under seventy pounds of pack and wool. Some regiments covered nearly two hundred and fifty miles in thirteen. Men slept while they walked. The reservists called back from civilian life were issued new boots — stiff, unbroken, five and a half pounds each — and marched to the Marne in them. More than fifteen thousand men were lost on the march itself, captured or fallen out or dead, before any of the fighting at the end of it.

W. Britain has him under all of it: the 1908 pattern webbing with the pouches across his chest, the large pack squared on his back, haversack and water bottle at his hip, entrenching tool, bayonet, and the SMLE slung muzzle-up over his right shoulder. A soft service cap, because the steel helmet was still more than a year away. He is a regular of the old professional army — the one that did the marching described above. In a diorama he steps straight out of the veteran's handshake and into the column beside the man waving his cap. The German infantry of 1914 are who he was walking away from.

W. Britain model 23066. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single foot figure marching on a sculpted groundwork base. Supplied in a clamshell pack.